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Although our history as an association dates back to the late 1800s, our packing facilities are state of the art, ready for the new millennium. As one of the largest independent citrus packing houses in California, our plant covers 4 acres under roof, on a 20 acre site. We have separate lemon and orange/grapefruit packing lines. Our lemon line is capable of packing 1,500 cartons per hour and our orange/grapefruit line can handle up to 3,000 cartons an hour. As one of Southern California's premier lemon shippers, we also have a separate lemon pre-grade line. The size of our facility not only provides outstanding production capacity, the scale of our operation allows us to handle the most boxes at the lowest unit cost for our growers.
We use a modern radio-frequency controlled bar coding system that enables our Sales Department to know exactly how much fruit of what kind is in inventory. This lets our Packing House Managers see how a load of fruit is packing out on a real time basis, for timely field harvesting decisions and prompt order fulfillment. Our cold storage rooms are mapped, and our fleet of forklifts have radio frequency equipped IBM terminals which tell our mainframe computer exactly where each pallet has been placed. When combined with our ability to print a smart pick list when a trucker signs in, this ensures that the correct order will always be loaded onto the truck quickly.
Our broad base of growers is an important part of the efficiency of our operations. Because we pack fruit from so many diverse growing regions, our seasons are longer so we minimize our plants idle time and resulting overhead expenses.
Although our plant is designed to function as a unit, the operations are carefully separated. We do everything possible to keep decay-causing organisms out of the fruit packing area. Field and storage bins never enter the packing area and no fruit ever enters the packing and grading system without treatment. By maintaining good packinghouse sanitation, we keep our potential for losses in the shipping and marketing stages to the absolute minimum. We have an excellent relationship with FMC Corporation, a leader in agricultural packing equipment and systems, and have recently installed completely new stainless steel wash beds and wax applicators on all of our processing lines.
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